Domination of Black

"I saw how the night came..."

Most of us are pawns.

Damion received an invite in his email to go and beta test a new MMORPG called Kingdom of Heresy. Doing some research on the game, he found that it had gotten perfect scores all around from various game critics who got in and several were calling it a WoW Killer. Doubting both of those facts, he decided, hey, it was Christmas break and he had nothing else to do, he’d check it out, so he went to the place where the beta was being put on.

He signed in with the grim-faced Shard employee (Shard being the company who designed the game) and took a seat at one of the computers, putting on his headphones, and starting his character design. He was endeared to the game immediately, and soon found himself drawn in to it.

It was about four hours in that he was entering a dark cave when he got a pop up to invite him to do the quest that would allow him to become an “elite” member, whatever that might be. He agreed, per the rules the Shard employee had given out, and found the cave suddenly altered. He saw shadows moving out of the corner of his eyes, and the ambient noises suddenly got a lot spookier. He heard the sound of a rat being gutted and ripped apart, and the sound of heavy wet breathing. He adjusted the brightness on his console and ahead of him saw … the shape of a large, shadowy black man, with gleaming shark fangs for a mouth.

He began fighting the monster with his character, but it felt odd, like he was really putting himself in to his character rather than just clicking some buttons. By the end of the fight, which he won, he felt emotionally and mentally drained. He had his character wait for a few minutes to heal, then continued forward to retrieve the Black Diamond. Inside the Diamond’s chamber, some shadow imps were dancing around: Pay the toll toll toll with your soul soul soul! they sang.

Damion picked up the Diamond, which caused a voice to cry out that he needed to collect some items—the diamond, a flask of blood, the flesh of an ally, and the Grimoire of Exogesis and Summoning. He immediately went to task collecting the flask of blood, which ended up being blood that could cure any disease, held in a temple; he stole it from the temple, and immediately everyone in it wasted away. He felt a tug at his soul as he did this, and felt…actually rather bad for hurting these NPCs, but that’s when the Shard employee called an end to the beta testing for the day, and Damion went home.

At home, he found all he could think about was the game. He was quaking so bad from wanting to play it again. “It’s just a game,” he chided himself. “It’s just a game.”

Brief cracks of light between long darknesses.

Jeremy Power was sitting in the UNCA library working on his group’s powerpoint and report for Thursday. For some reason, all the pictures except for the one of the little boy’s room were “normal,” or looked like a nice lived in house, while the little boy’s room still looked layered over. This disturbed Jeremy, but he put the picture away and didn’t look at it anymore. It was about this time that he heard some chaos coming from the front area of the library — a woman begging for a first aid kit for her daughter, and a little girl crouched behind her.

Jeremy rushed over to find that Cassie Wilkeshire was there, her jacket torn and her arm bleeding. He immediately crouched next to her, ignoring all the adults, to crouch and talk to her, rip the sleeve of his shirt to start wrapping her arm up. As her mom, Meg, panicked, Cassie reminded her mom that Elmer (From My Father’s Dragon) was brave and she should be too.

Meg asked the Librarian to call a taxi. Jeremy snapped at the librarian that she should have already called a goddamn taxi or an ambulance rather than just standing there. The librarian rolled her eyes and made the phone call; Meg went to wait on the taxi while Cassie hovered with Jeremy. She told him how she once got bitten by a turtle, and how one time she got scratched by a cat.

They all loaded into the taxi when it showed up and started driving along, but about 3/4s of the way to their destination, there was a sudden explosion as the engine quite literally blew up in the car. Jeremy in a panic dove out of the car and pulled Cassie with him, and Cassie went with him. When he realized it was just the engine, he lifted Cassie to his shoulders, nodded to Meg, and the three of them walked to the hospital.

Once there, Jeremy gave Cassie’s mom forty dollars to take Cassie to see The Muppets and buy her a cupcake and to help pay for the visit, since the two didn’t have any insurance. He then went back to the library and found none of his stuff had been taken (because no one cares about 1950s architecture). As he sat down to keep working, he started getting odd messages and emails, with subjects such as THEGHOSTBOY and THEGIRL. He read some, got disturbed and angry, and quickly left the library.

The House that [VOID] Built

It all started with a teaching assignment. Korowitz, professor of FA150, Art History, assigned the final project for her class. She separated the class into groups, and then gave them a house they had to go and take pictures of. A week later they were to give a presentation to the rest of the class, discussing the architecture found within, what time period it was from, and why they thought that. Her final group consisted of Jeremy Power, Zoe Sawyer, and Chance Spires.

The trio headed out to the house a few days later. It was far away from Asheville proper (or seemed to be — on a map it’s close; it just so happens that the only way to it happens to be on a long and twisty road that takes an hour to drive on) and, when they arrived, they found a beautiful three story mansion. Their instructions were to go around back and get the key from the turtle statue.

While back there, the group noticed several things. Some things several people noticed included the tribal drum set as well as the baseball field. Chance split from the others to go check out the baseball field; Zoe and Jeremy went inside.

Temporarily following Chance
Out back, Chance found that the baseball field was well-kept, and included a dugout in the ground, with some wire-mesh instead of a ceiling so that whoever was in it could look out on the field. He also saw a baseball bat signed by Babe Ruth and a baseball signed by Ty Cobb. Thrilled, he was going in to look at them when the sky overhead rumbled. In a panic and cursing the house’s owners lack of affection for their worth thousands if not millions dollars in good, he snatched them and ran for the car as it started raining horrible sleet. Once he’d stuffed them into his trunk, Chance turned and ran inside.

Inside with Jeremy and Zoe

Mostly ignoring each other, Jeremy and Zoe begin exploring the interior of the house, taking pictures. Zoe discovered a padded room with a Steinway piano on the inside—a soundproof room built for music practice, with awesome acoustics? Distractedly, she began playing piano. Meanwhile, Jeremy went upstairs, where he discovered a little boy’s room with an old worn stuffed rabbit in a cowboy hat as well as a few well-tended Dr. Seuss books.

When Chance burst in to the house soaking wet, the group ventured downstairs and started going through each and every room. It was during this that Jeremy noticed that each picture he took was odd — the house they were seeing seemed overlayed (like in old school cameras, rather than the digital camera he was using — when two photos were taken on the same bit of film) with an ancient house, old and rotting. He took a picture of Chance in the kitchen getting in the fridge, and the fridge — rather than nice and new and filled with delicious looking foods like it really was, instead was rusted out and gutted, filled with rotting slime, broken jars with earthworms crawling out of it.

It was in the study that Chance and Zoe looked over Jeremy’s shoulder and noticed this, but after a few minutes of arguing, the group decided maybe they were all going crazy. Jeremy led the way back upstairs. There the group found a nursery, the walls painted with scenes from children’s books. While in there, the group heard someone singing.

‘“Oranges and lemons”
say the Bells of St. Clement’s
“You owe me five farthings”
say the Bells of St. Martin’s’

Everyone immediately moved for the small child-sized door in the room that seemed to be locked. The voice grew silent as they talked. Chance had palmed a key from downstairs and tried it on the door and it opened to reveal a completely black room. Chance took a picture and saw shadows seeping out from the room. When he told Jeremy it might be a good idea to back off, Jeremy harrumphed and crawled inside, talking to the kid in the room — and the door slammed shut behind him.

Briefly with Jeremy

Inside the dark room, Jeremy found a small boy, maybe six or seven, curled in a tight ball. He started talking to the kid, and as he did he noticed a few things: purple splotches up and down the kid’s arms, blood seeping through the back of his shirt, and at one point when the boy uncurled his arms briefly to offer Jeremy a candy cane, a gaunt, bruised face with bleeding slashes down the cheeks. Jeremy talked to the boy and learned a few things.

With Chance and Zoe
Chance and Zoe tried frantically to get the door to the child’s place open when they heard someone behind them. They turned to find a large man standing there, brawly, thick with muscle. He had dark shaggy hair, a five-o-clock shadow, and thick body hair. He asked what they were doing, and when they explained, he offered to show them the third floor and said there’d be something they liked upstairs.

Once upstairs, the man showed Zoe to his wife—who was playing a violin quietly. The woman spoke to Zoe for a few minutes, and then the two began a duet—the woman on violin, Zoe singing. As they were performing, Zoe noticed the woman seemed to be becoming soft around the edges, as if she were going out of focus, and Zoe felt a thrill through her body, felt drums pounding in her head, and felt oddly attached to the music.

Meanwhile, Chance was dealing with the man showing him around his den. The man wrapped his arm around Chance’s shoulders and offered to show him his baseball signed by Sanchez, who he had met personally. Alarm bells went off in Chance’s head, considering Sanchez died in 1979. He started trying to get away, but when the man noticed this, he started changing into a sort of shadow monster.

The group then joined together to fight off the shadow man — who took a large chunk out of both Chance and Jeremy before being put down. The trio escaped to Chance’s car as the house seemed to revert to an old and falling apart locale, and they left to head home.

Just like what happens to us.

Chance made his way across campus to the gym. Too early in the season for actual practice (well, if his team didn’t want to get disqualified), the team was doing some conditioning training. Chance wandered in to the locker room to change, where he ran into Garth, the right fielder, and Trevor, pitcher. Trevor, normally a sarcastic energetic guy, had his head between his legs and looked pale. Chance asked him what was up — Trevor just mentioned his stomach had hurt and he’d been nauseous in the morning. Chance suggested he go home instead of practice, but Trevor refused.

Chance went in to the gym where they were doing some free-lifting. He sat and chatted with Garth, discussing the freshmen who were also conditioning. They decided which freshmen were going to last and which weren’t, got grumpy with Trevor being around and likely getting the whole team sick, and training in general. Slowly but surely other teammates trickled in until the whole baseball team (or close to whole) was exercising.

Coach Amir Jones showed up late and chatted with the players. He was watching Chance a little bit and arguing with the freshmen. Chance noticed that Trevor had something poking at the corner of his mouth—when suddenly Trevor pitched sideways, slamming in to the ground. Blood bubbled and then ran out of the corner of his mouth, and a moment later a fat bloody worm wiggled its way out of Trevor’s lip.

Chance yanked the worm out violently and kept hurrying to rip the worms out — as he pulled on the first and more became visible. Then, instructed by Coach to do so, Chance just hurried and started performing CPR on his teammate while others ran off to call 911. As he pumped on Trevor’s chest, Chance managed to cause Trevor to suddenly vomit up a fist sized ball of worms, all knotted together, and all thick and congealed with blood. The ambulance soon arrived to take Trevor away, and Coach called the rest of practice off.

Chance sneaked back in to the room afterward to stomp on all the worms, and got his water container and carefully got one worm into the container. He tightened the top and then hurried to the doctor where he was told he was healthy. He hung with some teammates that night and fell asleep. When he woke up the next morning, he felt a bit dizzy, and his stomach was cramping.

Beauty's sister and daughter.

Zoe made her way to one of her favorite clubs, Oliver or Twist. She’d heard through the grapevine that some guy calling himself Prince Amon was going to be playing there tonight, and from the rumors she’d heard, he was supposed to be rockstar worthy. When she arrives, she finds the same ol’ group she’s used to there: Frederick, the bartender who doesn’t mind surving under-agers, and her two acquaintences from the music school, Rachel (violist) and Caroline (opera soprano).

The three girls discuss the rumors they’ve heard — ranging from simply that the guy actually knows how to play his guitar to the fact that his voice is supposed to literally transcend heaven. They go to get some alcohol from Frederick while listening to the first guy on stage — a hipster. As they start paying attention to the hipster, Zoe’s eyes are drawn to a handsome blonde man carrying a guitar entering through the door.

The man claims the stool the hipster had been playing on, gets out his guitar, and begins playing. Immediately, the whole club falls into hushed silence. Zoe finds it does feel like she’s high just listening to him — her heart hammers in her chest, ephemeral fingers trail up and down her spine. The best part is briefly during the first song when Amon lifts his eyes to meet Zoe’s — just for a flickering second. Prince Amon’s five song set is short — too short for both Zoe and the audience. As he quietly packs up his things and leaves, she finds herself vying with the rest of the audience trying to get his attention.

She, Caroline, and Rachel slip out of the club after him but find that he seems to have vanished. Assuming he slipped into a car, the girls spend a few minutes looking for him, and then decide to head home. That night, Zoe gets a phone call at about 4AM consisting of a female voice spelling out her name and then saying a simple “Thank you.”

Brief cracks of light between long darknesses.

Jeremy left his English Composition 131 class and headed out to the quad to read. There he was approached by Cassie, who asked for him to read to her. Jeremy had previously purchased a book just for the occasion, and settled in to read to her, when overhead, a bird swooped down and slammed in to a tree and collapsed to the ground.

Jeremy attempted to patch the bird up, then picked it up and searched for a vet. Unable to find one, he was shocked when the bird came back to life. It started fluttering violently against his hand, and then got out of his hand only to go hurtling to the ground again. Jeremy tried to catch the falling bird but missed, and the bird hit the ground and died.

Jeremy was heartbroken over this. When a passing woman said “It’s only a bird,” he responded “and you’re only a goddamned girl!” Victor informed him “Satan’s work killed that bird.” Jeremy thanked him for his insight, picked the bird up, and went to give it a proper funeral.

He carried it out to a bridge, flung it in to the sky over the water, and watched it fall — letting it fly one last time. Deciding that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, he headed back downtown, going to the Battery Park Hotel to get on the roof and see what it was like, but was stopped by the roof access being locked.

I, the storyteller will note each scene here — public things only. GM things will be kept in the little private “GM” box that only I can see! I might not be 100% honest about personal scenes, and I may over all paraphrase here and there.

If anything really majorly secret is revealed in a personal scene, I will cover it up in one way or another.